Cellular Ion Homeostasis Mechanism in Salt Tolerant Plants

Abiotic stresses adversely affect crop productivity and quality. Salt salinity stress drastically reduces agricultural yield throughout the world affecting crop productivity. From the physiological point of view, the plant has numerous processes that function in coordination to alleviate both cellular hyper-osmolarity and ion disequilibrium. The molecular basis of salt-tolerance mechanism has to be understood first, so that one can identify the genetic determinants responsible for salt tolerance. Since in most cases, the fundamental salt tolerance determinants are found to mediate cellular ion homeostasis, this review will focus on the biochemical aspects primarily on the functional essentiality of ion homeostasis mechanisms in plant salt tolerance.